Decision Analytics, Mobile Services, and Service Science

The Decision Analytics, Mobile Services and Service Science Track got started 19 years ago at the HICSS-31 in 1998 under the name Modelling Technologies and Intelligent Sys- tems that Prof Dan Dolk of the Naval Postgraduate School introduced. The name and the focus shifted at HICSS-33 to Decision Technology in Management that Dan Dolk now introduced in order to get contributions to the use of information systems to support managerial planning, problem solving and decision making. This theme continued for 12 years (through HICSS-44) under the leadership of Dan Dolk and with quite some success as the track most of the time had 12 mini-tracks which kept collecting good contributions of high quality papers. The track reacted to the rise of the mo- bile technology early on and started a mini-track on mobile commerce and mobile services at HICSS-35 in 2002; mobile technologies then got quickly picked up by most of the other tracks and the plans we had to get a critical mass of papers on mobile services concentrated to one track could be realized only at HICSS-45. The track changed name to Decision Technology, Mobile Technologies and Service Science at HICSS-45 in 2012 when Dan Dolk asked Prof Christer Carlsson of the Abo Akademi University in Finland to join him as track co-chair. As Dan Dolk wanted to retire from the track chair after running the track very successfully for 14 years, Prof Haluk Demirkan, University of Washington, was elected to join Christer Carlsson as track co-chair. The discussion had been going on for a couple of years that decision support for managers should start to incorporate the new analytics movement that had started to take over from the classical Operations Research and Management Science as a major shift in producing critical data, information and knowledge for managerial planning, problem solving and decision making. The analytics is driven by software that makes it possible to make use of advanced analytical methods as part of corporate and enterprise information systems. The track changed name to present form of DA/MS/SS for HICSS-46 in 2013.

There have been a number of memorable events organized by the track over the two decades of operation; space does not permit to report them in any detail – we will have to discuss them in one of the history sessions at HICSS-50 – but the full-day workshop Evolution of Mobile Ecosystems that Nokia and Microsoft organized at HICSS-46 will probably be noted by historians as some of the disruptions that changed the mobile industry forever were discussed in the workshop.

The DA/MS/SS Track works out emerging managerial and organizational decision-making strategies, processes, tools, technologies, services and solutions in the Digital Age. This is done in 4 interrelated themes. The first theme, Analytics, focuses on decision making processes, analytics tools and supporting technologies which has collected papers on big data and analytics, business intelligence, cognitive analytics, decision support, gamification, logistics and supply chain management, machine learning and network analytics, deep learning, visual decision analytics, streaming data analytics, multi-criteria analysis, etc. which now are core research themes in analytics. Mobile services focus on development and interaction with data, information and analysis results on mobile technology platforms and have collected papers on mobile value services and open digital services. Challenges and issues of service industries, service orientation and service transformation of strategies, processes, organizations, systems and technologies are covered in Service Science. In the theme Critical and Emerging Solutions innovative approaches to decision making - such as Internet of Things for services through smart devices and wearables - are introduced and discussed to guide research to new openings for information technology.

Minitracks:

• Addressing Grand Challenges with Information Technology
• Big Data and Analytics: Concepts, Methods, Techniques and Applications
• Business Intelligence, Analytics and Cognitive: Case Studies and Applications (COGS)
• Data, Text and Web Mining for Business Analytics
• Decision Support for Smart City and Digital Services
• Deep Learning, Ubiquitous and Toy Computing
• Digital and ICT Enabled Services
• Gamification
• Intelligent Decision Support and Big Data for Logistics and Supply Chain Management
• Interactive Visual Decision Analytics
• Internet of Things: Providing Services Using Smart Devices, Wearables and Quantified Self
• Machine Learning and Network Analytics in Finance
• Mobile Value Services
• Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis and Support Systems
• Open Digital Services and Platforms
• Service Analytics
• Service Science
• Smart Service Systems: Analytics, Cognition and Innovation
• Streaming Data Analytics and Applications

The mini-track chairs have written brief summaries of their mini-tracks and overviews of the papers in their sessions. Panels are organized to explore potential demand for new mini-tracks or re-orientation of existing mini-tracks to capture emerging trends in Analytics.

We wish to thank all the people who have worked efficiently and effectively to develop the DA Track; the MT chairs who have spent countless hours to get good quality papers, to get reviewers to accept work for HICSS and then to evaluate and judge the review results; the high-quality collection of papers in the DA Track is a result of their efforts.

Track Chairs:

Christer Carlsson
Institute for Advanced Management Systems Research
ICT House A4053
Abo Akademi University
20520 Turku, Finland
Tel: +358-2-215-4196
Fax: +358-2-251-9912
Email: christer.carlsson@abo.fi

Haluk Demirkan
Milgard School of Business
University of Washington – Tacoma
1900 Commerce Street
Box 358420
Tacoma, WA 98402-3100
Tel: (253) 692-5751
Fax: (253) 692-4523
Email: haluk@uw.edu